LA's The Hammer and The Williams Institute Present Panel on Blood Equality

On November 22, The Hammer Museum and the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law present Blood Equality, a panel conversation organized by artist Jordan Eagles to address the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)'s discriminatory policy on blood donation from gay and bisexual men, featuring notable experts and advocates for this issue.

This free admission event, presented in advance of World AIDS Day (December 1) and in response to the FDA's new public comment period, takes place at the Hammer Museum on November 22, 2016, and will be live streamed online.

In 1983, in an early response to the AIDS crisis, the FDA implemented a lifetime ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men. More than 30 years later, the FDA proposed an updated policy that would allow gay and bisexual men to donate blood, but only if they are celibate for a full year. There is no celibacy requirement for heterosexuals, regardless of their risk for contracting HIV.

A Williams Institute study found that lifting the ban completely could save up to a million lives annually. In July 2016, after the Orlando massacre in which gay and bisexual men were turned away from donating blood; and after much anger from the LGBTQ community over the FDA revised 1-year celibacy policy, the FDA has issued a new public comment period, which ends three days after the Blood Equality program.

The event will be moderated by Mark Joseph Stern, writer from Slate.com, who has been covering the blood ban since 2012.

Expert panelists include: